The Farm (21 page)

My mum sat beside me, and it was one of the few occasions when I could see her struggling with how best to introduce her evidence.

You and I often went hunting for chanterelles when you were a child. We were a formidable team. You were so quick among the trees, with an eye for where they grew. We’d forage for the entire day, returning home only when our baskets were brimming. But you always hated the taste even when I did no more than fry them and serve them on buttered toast. Once, you even cried because you were so disappointed that you couldn’t join me in saying how delicious they were. You felt sure that you’d let me down. Of all the people in the world you can testify to my abilities: I’ve never picked a mushroom that was dangerous.

• • •

I
NODDED MY AGREEMENT:

‘I’ve never known you to.’

My mum pushed for more:

‘You find it hard to believe I could make such a mistake?’

‘I find it hard to believe.’

After the police officer departed, Chris suggested I’d been under too much stress trying to prepare our barns for paying guests. I was working fourteen-hour days, seven days a week. He claimed I’d lost weight and that I needed to enjoy life in Sweden more. As though the idea were off the top of his head he suggested that we should go into the forests for a relaxing day foraging for mushrooms. I wasn’t sure whether his proposal was genuine. He’d framed it so cleverly I had no reason for refusing. I gave him the benefit of the doubt, of course I did.

The next day it was raining outside. Chris said it didn’t matter – keen not to cancel our plans. Since I didn’t mind about a little rain, we cycled north, to the forests, the same forest where Teardrop Island was located. I tried not to think about the island, or Chris’s visits there. Turning off the road, we cycled up a dirt track. The easily accessible areas were no good. We needed to go deeper, off the paths, into parts of the forest that hadn’t been touched, the remoter spots. We left our bikes together under the cover of a tree next to Elk River. We took our cycle baskets, padded with newspaper to stop the bottom layer of mushrooms being crushed and destroyed. After a while we reached a slope of giant rocks, boulders the size of cars. Some were completely covered in moss. I couldn’t imagine many people climbing the slope in order to find mushrooms, so I pointed to the top, saying that I was going to forage up there. Without waiting for a reply I began to climb, clambering over the stone, my feet slipping on the moss. At the top there was a view over a hundred thousand trees – firs, pines and silver birches as far as the eye could see, no roads, no people, no houses, no power lines, just the forests as they had been when I was a child and always would be, long after I’m dead. Chris joined me at the top, breathlessly admiring the view.

Chris has never taken foraging as seriously as me, or as you. He’s half-hearted in his efforts. He likes to break and smoke and chat. I didn’t want to be burdened by him. We agreed to meet back at the bikes, setting a time towards the end of the day. I quickly left him behind, and before long I’d found my first chanterelles, a tiny cluster of young mushrooms. I cut them with my special knife rather than ripping them out, so that they’d grow back. Within a few minutes I’d found a rhythm, hardly ever straightening my back as I swooped between the damp shady nooks where they pushed out of the soil. Then, tucked under the exposed root of an ancient tree, a golden treasure trove, twenty or thirty together, enough to make me exclaim with gratitude, as if the forests themselves had made me a gift. Without a pause for lunch, I stopped only when my basket was full, a satisfying heap, like the kind we’d always collected together. You would’ve been proud of me.

At the end of the day it was a long walk back. I was tired and happy – the happiest I’d been for some time, remembering the true reason I’d come back to my country, for feelings just like this. The light rain hadn’t stopped and after several hours my hair was soaked. I didn’t mind. I pressed my hair flat with my hands, squeezing all the rainwater out. I was quite sure Chris had stopped foraging long ago. He’d be by the bicycles, sheltered, perhaps with a fire burning, warm by the river – that was my honest hope.

When I reached the bicycles, there was no fire burning. Chris was sitting by the river, on the trunk of a fallen tree, smoking Håkan’s weed, his back to me, hood pulled up. I placed my basket by the bicycle, beside his, which contained nothing, not a single mushroom, and joined him by the river. He turned round and smiled, which surprised me, because I’d been expecting him to be annoyed. He must have waited several hours. He told me to take a seat and offered to fetch a cup of tea from our Thermos. My hands had become damp and my fingers were stiff. I was looking forward to a warm drink. Several minutes passed, no tea arrived. Finally I heard him call out my name.

‘Tilde?’

Something was wrong. I stood up and saw Chris standing by the bicycles, staring down at my basket. He seemed upset. Now the trap will be sprung, I thought. I didn’t understand the nature of it but I could feel its jaws closing around me. My happiness had been complacency. Afraid, I slowly walked towards him, not sure what to expect. He crouched down and picked up my basket. Instead of chanterelle mushrooms it was full of these—

• • •

M
Y MUM PUSHED OPEN
the other side of the matchbox, revealing a golden silver birch leaf suspended on a bed of cotton wool.

Leaves, Daniel!

Leaves!

The basket was full of leaves! Chris was looking at me with mock pity in his eyes. It took me a few seconds to absorb the implication. This wasn’t a practical joke. He was claiming that I’d spent the entire day collecting leaves. I grabbed the top layer, crushing them in my hands, digging down to the bottom. Every chanterelle had gone. With a jerk of my wrists I threw the leaves into the air. Chris just stood there as they tumbled around us. The whole situation was preposterous. I couldn’t have made such an extraordinary mistake. Then I remembered my knife. It was smeared with chanterelle stem. So I brandished the blade, purely as evidence. Chris lurched back, as if I were threatening him. Belatedly I understood the nature of the trap. Only one explanation remained – Chris had replaced the chanterelles with these leaves. He’d collected them while we’d been separated. He knew we’d separate. He knew he’d have time to return and make preparations. While I was waiting for tea, he’d made the swap. I cried out, demanding to know where the mushrooms were. I patted his pockets. The mushrooms were surely close by. Perhaps he’d prepared a hole and tipped them in, burying them, covering them with loose soil. I began to dig, like a dog searching for a bone. When I looked up I saw Chris coming towards me, arms out wide, as if to smother me. This time I did use the knife, I slashed the air and told him to stay back. He was trying to soothe me as if I were a startled horse, but the sound of his voice made me sick. I had to get away, so I ran into the forest. When I looked back he was running after me. So I ran faster, heading for higher ground, I couldn’t beat him on the flat but I was a nimble climber, he was a smoker, I was fitter over long distances. He’d almost caught up, reaching out, fingertips stretched towards the tails of my rain jacket. I cried out, reaching the base of the boulder slope, scrambling on all fours. I felt him grab my leg so I kicked out, kicked and kicked until I caught him in the face. It bought me some time. From the bottom of the slope he screamed my name, this time not as a question but furious:

‘Tilde!’

My name echoed around the forest but I didn’t look back, reaching the top and running as fast as I could into the woods, leaving Chris screaming from the base of the hill.

Eventually I collapsed with exhaustion, lying under a tree on the wet moss, the light rain on my face, trying to fully grasp the implications of the plan that had been launched against me. As the sky darkened I heard my name being called out, not by one voice but several. I cautiously followed the sounds back to the ridge of boulders and saw crisscrossing beams of the torches through the trees, counting them – one, two, three, four, five, six, seven – seven beams of light, seven people looking for me. It was a search party. In a matter of hours since my fight with Chris a search party had been mobilised. It was an overreaction. There was no need to recruit so many people unless you required witnesses, unless you required this staged incident to be logged officially. Chris had probably given a statement, shown them the bicycles, the basket full of leaves, marked it as evidence, shown them the spot where I’d slashed at him with the knife. He’d been quick and smart. I’d been wild-tempered and foolish.

Consider Chris’s character. As you can testify, he’s always hated the authorities, he’s wary of doctors, and he’s never trusted the police. If he were innocent he would’ve searched for me alone. What are the chances that he would have phoned the police to organise an official search party? The chances are zero. I wasn’t hurt or lost – I’m an adult and in no need of being escorted out of the forest like a lost child. To reassert my authority and offer proof of my presence of mind, there was only one option. I’d set about finding my own way back to the farm. This would prove that I was competent. There’s a legal phrase for this, a term I’ve heard a great number of times in the past few weeks, a Latin term –
non compos mentis
– not of sound mind. If I were found lost and cold, wandering in these forests, I’d be declared not of sound mind. I wasn’t lost, I was
compos mentis
, and once I’d located Elk River it was a simple case of following the fast-flowing water all the way back home.

It was midnight by the time I reached our farm. There were several cars in the drive. My enemies were waiting for me. I recognised Håkan’s Saab, there was Stellan the detective’s car. But the remaining car was a mystery to me. It was expensive and impressive. I was outnumbered. I briefly considered running away, but the thought was a childish one. I didn’t have a plan. I didn’t have my satchel or my journal. Most importantly, I couldn’t abandon my responsibilities to Mia. If I ran, my enemies would only use it to support their argument. They’d claim I was acting erratically and illogically. I entered my farm, expecting an ambush. Even so, I was unprepared for what happened next.

The mysterious expensive car belonged to Dr Olle Norling, the celebrity doctor. While our shoulders might have brushed at parties, I hadn’t, at that time, been worthy of his attention – this was the first occasion we’d spoken directly. Chris stood in the corner, his eyebrow fixed with a bandage. I guessed that was due to the injury I’d inflicted on him while trying to escape, a kick to the head. It was now part of the evidence against me, along with the silver birch leaves. I asked what was going on, not aggressively. I needed to be composed and articulate, not emotional. These men would catch me with emotion. They’d try to provoke me and then claim that I was hysterical. I didn’t wait for an answer. Instead, I described our silly little argument in the forest. Feeling disgruntled, I’d walked home. That was the long and short of the matter, nothing more remarkable than that, so why were the police here, why were the detectives not looking for Mia, why was the great Dr Norling not hosting his radio show, or the powerful Håkan not dealing with his business empire, why were they gathered here, in our modest farm, as solemn as a wake?

Norling’s first words were:

‘I’m worried about you, Tilde.’

He spoke perfect English. His voice was so soft, like a cushion – you could rest your head and fall asleep on the sound of his allegations. He uttered my name like I was a dear friend. No wonder the public adores him. He could imitate the sound of genuine affection faultlessly. I had to pinch myself not to believe it. But it was a lie, the trick of a professional showman.

Seeing my enemies lined up against me, I absorbed the depth of their expertise. They were pillars of the community. And they had an insider, Chris, an ally who could provide them with a host of personal details, perhaps he already had, perhaps he’d told them about Freja. The thought terrified me. But what surprised me most was the presence of the rusted steel box in the middle of the room on a table in among the conspirators, the rusted steel box that I’d placed under the sink many months ago, the box I’d saved from the well diggers, the box I’d found a metre under the soil containing no more than the water-destroyed blank old pages. Why was this worthless old box in such a prominent place? Dr Norling noticed that I was staring at it. He picked the box up, offering it to me as though it were a gift. His soft kind voice commanded me:

‘Open this for us, Tilde.’

I hated the way he said my name.

‘Open it, Tilde.’

So I did.

• • •

F
OR THE SECOND TIME
my mum took out the rusted steel box from the satchel. She placed it on my lap.

Norling asked why I thought the box might be important. I didn’t know. And said so. It made no sense. Norling didn’t believe me, asking if I was sure. What a question! Of course I was sure. A person can always be sure of what they don’t know. They might not be sure of what they know. But I knew nothing about the reasons these men were suddenly so deadly serious about a collection of water-damaged sheets of paper, crinkled and discoloured and more than a hundred years old, pages that had been entirely blank when the box was first discovered.

Go ahead and open the box.

Take out the pages.

Turn to the back.

You see?

They’re no longer blank! They’re covered in writing, beautiful old-fashioned handwriting, in Swedish, of course, traditional Swedish, old-fashioned Swedish. I was in shock. Was it possible I’d missed the writing on the back, presuming them all to be blank? It was so long ago I couldn’t clearly remember whether I’d checked every page or not. Norling asked me to read them. I exclaimed, in English: